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. . . utopia is a living, breathing, imperfect thing that expands and grows with us. It’s always a reflection of our individual selves, of the larger communities we choose, and of the time and place we are born into.
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Alison Stine discusses her new novel, ROAD OUT OF WINTER.
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I won’t say I brought this on myself, but I wrote it. I wrote it myself.
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Heather McHugh discusses her new poetry collection, MUDDY MATTERHORN.
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Luis Othoniel Rosa discusses his novel, DOWN WITH GARGAMEL!.
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There is no real freedom to create art, only the obligation to wealth.
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Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers discusses her new collection, THE TILT TORN AWAY FROM THE SEASONS.
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There are so many happy endings that dystopia and utopia become almost indistinguishable by the novel’s end.
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Franny Choi discusses her second collection, SOFT SCIENCE.
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Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah discusses FRIDAY BLACK.
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Nothing seems fixed or stable anymore except ongoing instability.
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Peter Mishler discusses his debut collection, Fludde, the effect of ritual on poems, and childhood psychology.
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Tom McAllister discusses his new novel, How to Be Safe, workshops, Twitter, dystopia, and narrative voice.
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Rachel Heng discusses her debut novel, Suicide Club, the book’s genesis, her writing and reading life, and her thoughts on “wellness.”
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There’s a lot left unsaid between the women of Red Clocks; not even they know the extent to which they’re all connected.
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Sarah Blake discusses her new collection, Let’s Not Live on Earth, questions in poems, monsters, and the challenge of writing a dystopia.
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I’m not here to wallow in what feels like our new dystopia, no. Me? I am here, to rest up before the next bout. I am here to watch The Price Is Right and make friends.
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Omar El Akkad discusses his debut novel American War, suicide terrorism, fossil fuels, and blankets.
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Jorie Graham discusses her latest collection, Fast, the terrifying destruction of our planet, a happy formal accident, and how to live in times of world crisis.
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Geeta Kothari discusses her debut collection, American xenophobia, and the immigrant narrative.
...moreWelcome to This Week in Books, where we highlight books just released by small and independent presses. Books have always been a symbol for and means of spreading knowledge and wisdom, and they are an important part of our toolkit in fighting for social justice. If we’re going to move our national narrative away from […]
...moreWell, it’s been one week under the Trump administration, and already we are living in a land of “alternative facts.” After Kellyanne Conway used the term to defend Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s falsehoods regarding the inauguration crowd size on Sunday, the American people were, understandably, reminded of George Orwell’s 1984, and sales of the book […]
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Jeremy P. Bushnell discusses his new novel, The Insides, themes of consent, and designing a post-apocalyptic board game.
...moreMalka Older discusses her debut novel Infomocracy, the nature of elections, and the future of democracy.
...moreAt The Establishment, Laura Beans discusses the importance of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as a predictive novel, drawing many connections between the novel and increasing attempts to control women’s bodies: Instead of seeming further from the truth, the novel’s warnings only seem to echo louder in recent years. Atwood’s analysis of her own twisted […]
...moreGranta’s summer issue is themed “The Legacies of Love,” and in a new story from the online issue, Glasgow-based writer Sophie Mackintosh strips love back to its animal bones in a story that is less rom-com and more Hunger Games, but without the love triangle. Murder class was the new thing, but of course they […]
...moreAt the Huffington Post, Maddie Crum and Maxwell Strachan ask 7 science fiction authors to hypothesize about what a dystopian Olympics might look like. While most of the authors acknowledge the influence that climate change and technology will have on the Olympics, Crum and Strachan note that the authors’ responses are surprisingly optimistic. Here’s how Malka Older, […]
...moreSome people write about dystopian futures, or reimagined folktales, or ghosts, or science fiction. Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of the upcoming story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone, does it all. The debut collection, out this month from Black Lawrence Press, weaves Japanese folklore and pop culture into fantastical plots and futuristic […]
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Chris Jennings talks about his new book Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism, incremental reform, Transcendentalists, Shakers, and creating a more perfect future.
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In a world where boundaries between private and public are already blurring, Tim and Nicolaas wanted to find out what would happen if those boundaries disappeared altogether.
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